Pieces to Start With
Here are my blatantly biased suggestions for pieces that someone who wants to get into classical should start with. Everybody into classical will suggest completely different things for beginners based on what they personally enjoy. I’m definitely the right one though.
What I’ve done here is to break down the music into different eras, most of which sound pretty different from each other. Ideally it’d be good to hear one so you can pick a specific era that sounds good to your ears. Everybody has a different preference. For example, it took me about two years of listening before I could bear to listen to the late romantic stuff.
If you listen to each one of these pieces seven times, and you don’t like any of them, then I’ll stop trying to convince you to like classical music.
Baroque Era
Bach - Brandenburg Concertos (Amazon)
Well, it pretty much had to be Bach since he’s the all-Germanic (as opposed to all-American) superstar of the Baroque period. The Brandenburg Concertos are one of the most well known pieces of his, a varied bunch of relatively short (compared to concertos in later eras) but perfectly formed little beasties. These have the precision and cleverness typical of Bach, and Baroque music in general.
Classical Era
Mozart - Symphonies No. 40 and 41 (Amazon)
Yeah, that’s two pieces, but they pretty much are always packaged together. These are the last two symphonies of Mozart, and show off his always perky, pretty, and elegant melodies. You’ll be whistling the beginning of 40 and the end of 41 for ages after listen to hear them.
Early Romantic
Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 (Amazon)
Beethoven - Symphony No. 7 (Amazon)
Choose the former if you want a heavier, more in your face experience. Hopefully you’re attracted by the fact you’ve heard the first few bars ten-thousand and nine times, or it doesn’t put you off too much. The rest of it is great, especially the third movement which leads into the huge and blazing last movement. If you can’t bear to listen to those overfamiliar bars, mumber 7 is lighter, more fun, much more rhythmic, and chances are you haven’t heard any of it before.
Middle Romantic
Mendelssohn - Symphony No. 4 “Italian” (Amazon)
Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsodies (especially No. 2) (Amazon)
Okay, the former piece is a reasonably conservative but fantastic piece. It’s got bounding, driving rhythms, beautiful orchestration and melodies, and a cyclic ending that satisfyingly finishes with a transformed version of the start of the whole thing. The latter is wild, crazy, over the top romantic piano at it’s best. you might know the No. 2 from a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
Late Romantic
Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique” (Amazon)
Brahms - Symphony No. 4 (Amazon)
Dvorak - Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” (Amazon)
Well, choose any of these three. Tchaikovsky is more sweeping and tugging on your heart-strings, with his orchestra strings. Brahms is a little more serious, cultured, grand and imposing, especially the excellent last movement. Dvorak is… well you might know this piece already. It’s more rhythmic, more jazzy, more modern sounding. All of them are large and after your heart.
Atonal (aka the Second Viennese School)
Berg - Violin Concerto (Amazon)
This is heady stuff. The atonalists (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern) didn’t believe in scales and keys (Like A minor, B flat, etc. Not piano keys. Those are hard to deny) and stuff, they gave every note equal importance. Unsurprisingly this makes a lot of their stuff impossible to enjoy, unless you are being all scholarly (or pretentious) about it. This piece, however, spectacularly unifies their approach with regular tonal composition. It’s pretty damn unique sounding.
Modern
Shostakovich - Symphony No. 10 (Amazon)
Prokofiev - Piano Concerto No. 2 (Amazon)
Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring (Amazon)
These are all great examples of how, instead of going along with the atonalists, composers realized that there was something really very fundamental about tonality. They kept it, but pushed it hard. Shostakovich uses melodies which are morbidly stuck between keys, Prokofiev makes it sound like someone is hitting the wrong notes (but, you know, in a good way) and Stravinsky caused riots with the primeval sounding “Rite of Spring”. I’d recommend listening to all of them, they all have their own unique sounds. The first is big, touching, driving, sarcastic and sly. The second is similar but more percussive, and more playful… in places. The third is wild, primal and more alien sounding.
Post Modern
Adams - Chamber Symphony (Amazon)
Schnittke - Viola Concerto (Amazon)
I guess this is where we are now. These guys are bizarre. You might well hate them. I like them, but not… fully. They are a bit too abrasive. The former is nothing like a traditional chamber symphony: it’s a self described unification of atonal music with the soundtrack from old Warner Brothers cartoons. The second is one of Schnittke’s many attempts at unifying “low” and “high” music. He’ll switch from very classical, to ridiculous fairground music, to a film soundtrack in about three-and-a-half bars, while being horribly, wonderfully, screechingly microtonal (sliding between regular notes).